In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books. Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck's home. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck's footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest and stumbles across glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, Mak searches for the roots of America and what remains of the world Steinbeck describes. How has America changed in the last fifty years; what remains of the American dream; and what do Europe and America now have in common?

In 1960, John Steinbeck set out in his pick-up truck with his dog Charley to rediscover and chronicle his native USA, from Maine to California. He felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds and the essence of the American people. Moving through the woods and deserts, dirt tracks and highways to large cities and glorious wildernesses, Steinbeck observed - with remarkable honesty, insight and a humorous eye - the gamut of America and the people who inhabited it. His 10,000-mile journey took him through almost forty states, where he saw things that made him proud, angry, sympathetic and elated. A rugged and passionate adventure of self-identity, Steinbeck's vision of the changing world still speaks to us prophetically through the decades.

The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared literary treasury. In 1999, journalist and historian Geert Mak criss-crossed the continent in the simple yet monumental quest to trace European twentieth-century history as the world slipped into the twenty-first. In Europe is a dazzling account of that journey, and combines the larger story of Europe with intimate, vivid detail. It is also now a poignant reminder that the European project was then and is now a unprecedented experiment; that we still have ‘a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to explain.’

One of the most iconic characters in children’s books Join the world’s most famous travelling reporter in his exciting adventures as he travels behind the Iron Curtain in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, and tangles with Al Capone in Tintin in America. The first of eight volumes containing Hergй’s best loved adventure stories, with two thrilling mysteries: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Accompanied by his dog Snowy, Tintin leaves Brussels to go undercover in Soviet Russia. His attempts to research his story are put to the test by the Bolsheviks and Moscow’s secret police … Tintin in America Gangsters, Cowboys, and the Big Apple await Tintin when he travels across the Atlantic to America. He soon finds himself in terrible danger – but with Snowy to help him, he faces it head on … Join the most iconic character in comics as he embarks on extraordinary adventures spanning historical and political events.

In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson was suffering from poor health, struggling to survive on the income derived from his writings, and tormented by his infatuation with Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman. His response was to embark on a journey through the Cevennes with a donkey, Modestine, and a notebook, which he later transformed into Travels with a Donkey. Just a few months after publication, Stevenson was off again - this time crossing the Atlantic and the breadth of America in the hope of being re-united with Fanny, an experience he recorded in The Amateur Emigrant. Both pieces are classics of travel writings, which reveal as much about Stevenson's character as the landscape he travels through.

Collected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels. From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of realism, that were imbued with energy and resilience.

Sequel to the outstanding historical novel Earthly Joys, and written by the bestselling Philippa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Virgin's Lover. John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his father's unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. John's plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers. In the new world and the old, the established order is breaking down and every family has to find its own way of surviving. For the Tradescants, through the upheavals of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, this means consolidating their reputations as the greatest gardeners in the country.

Sequel to the outstanding historical novel Earthly Joys, and written by the bestselling Philippa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Virgins Lover. John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his fathers unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. Johns plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers. In the new world and the old, the established order is breaking down and every family has to find its own way of surviving. For the Tradescants, through the upheavals of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, this means consolidating their reputations as the greatest gardeners in the country.

Sequel to the outstanding historical novel Earthly Joys, and written by the bestselling Philippa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Virgins Lover. John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his fathers unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. Johns plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers. In the new world and the old, the established order is breaking down and every family has to find its own way of surviving. For the Tradescants, through the upheavals of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, this means consolidating their reputations as the greatest gardeners in the country.

When Charles Dickens set out for America in 1842, he was the most famous man of his day to make the journey, and embarked on his travels with an intense curiosity. His frank descriptions cover everything from his comically wretched sea voyage to his sheer astonishment at Niagara Falls, while he also visited hospitals, prisons and law courts. But Dickens's depiction of America as a land ruled by money, built on slavery, with a corrupt press and unsavoury manners, provoked a hostile reaction on both sides of the Atlantic. American Notes is an illuminating account of a great writer's revelatory encounter with the New World.

Iris Murdoch really knows how to write, can tell a story, delineate a character, catch an atmosphere with deadly accuracy John Betjeman A revolver shot rings through a Whitehall office one hot afternoon in the middle of an English summer. A Government official has apparently shot himself, but the circumstances are questionable - prompting Octavian Gray, head of the department in which the dead man worked, to investigate. Lawyer John Ducane is charged with the task, interviewing other civil servants by day, and by night attempting repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - to break up with his mistress. When Ducane travels to Gray's Dorset home everything becomes even more mysterious and nothing is quite as it seems.

A collection of letters from John le Carre, one of the greatest British novelists of our time, and a fabulous letter writer, spanning decades from his childhood to the Cold War to his final years John le Carre was one of the greatest novelists of his generation but also had an extraordinary life, from his childhood with a con man father to his inimitable career as a writer. From his involvement in the Cold War, time in Berlin, travels to Vietnam and engagement with world leaders, his experiences were truly remarkable. This collection of letters reveals John le Carre - the man, the writer and his world - for the first time and most intimately. Including letters to Stephen Fry and about Mrs Thatcher, and correspondence with Alec Guinness and a ten-year-old aspiring spy, Selected Letters come together with crispness and clarity to illuminate the extraordinary writer. A magnificent and tender portrait for John le Carre's many millions of fans around the world.

Both a fast-paced story of social unrest and strike, and the tale of one young man's struggle for identity, IN DUBIOUS BATTLE is a novel about the apocalyptic violence that breaks out when the masses become the mob. Set in California apple country, a strike by migrant workers spirals out of control, as principled defiance turns into blind fanaticism. Caught in this upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself briefly becoming the leader of the strike before being crushed in its service. IN DUBIOUS BATTLE explores and dramatises many of the ideas and themes key to Steinbeck's writing.

Follows Buddy, a German shepherd, from training in Switzerland to home in America with Morris Frank, who was instrumental in starting the Seeing Eye in America in the 1930s.

Britain's best-loved comic genius Stephen Fry turns his celebrated wit and insight to unearthing the real America as he travels across the continent in his black taxicab. Stephen's account of his adventures is filled with his unique humour, insight and warmth in this beautifully illustrated book that accompanies his journey for the BBC1 series. 'Stephen Fry is a treasure of the British Empire.' - The Guardian Stephen Fry has always loved America, in fact he came very close to being born there. Here, his fascination for the country and its people sees him embarking on an epic journey across America, visiting each of its 50 states to discover how such a huge diversity of people, cultures, languages, beliefs and landscapes combine to create such a remarkable nation. Starting on the eastern seaboard, Stephen zig-zags across the country in his London taxicab, talking to its hospitable citizens, listening to its music, visiting its landmarks, viewing small-town life and America's breath-taking landscapes - following wherever his curiosity leads him. Stephen meets a collection of remarkable individuals - American icons and unsung local heroes alike. Stephen starts his epic journey on the east coast and zig-zags across America, stopping in every state from Maine to Hawaii. En route he discovers the South Side of Chicago with blues legend Buddy Guy, catches up with Morgan Freeman in Mississippi, strides around with Ted Turner on his Montana ranch, marches with Zulus in New Orleans' Mardi Gras, and drums with the Sioux Nation in South Dakota; joins a Georgia family for thanksgiving, 'picks' with Bluegrass hillbillies, and finds himself in a Tennessee garden full of dead bodies. Whether in a club for failed gangsters (yes, those are real bullet holes) or celebrating Halloween in Salem (is there anywhere better?), Stephen is welcomed by the people of America - mayors, sheriffs, newspaper editors, park rangers, teachers and hobos, bringing to life the oddities and splendours of each locale. A celebration of the magnificent and the eccentric, the beautiful and the strange, Stephen Fry in America is our author's homage to this extraordinary country.

The Penguin Modern Classics edition of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction which, with its unique melange of fact and fiction, creates a compelling, tragic vision of America at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses 'camera eye' and 'newsreel' sections to create a fragmented atmosphere. Through the testimony of numerous characters, both fictional and historical figures, he builds up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century. Richly detailed and throbbing with vitality, U.S.A. vividly evokes that uncertain period when America, so full of ideas and potential, was slowly and painfully abandoning the great American Dream. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago, the son of an eminent lawyer. After graduating from Harvard he served in the US Army Medical Corps during the First World War, and dabbled in journalism before embarking on life as a writer. In 1925 he published Manhattan Transfer, his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style - a mixture of fact and fiction. His began a series of panoramic epics of American life with the U.S.A. trilogy, using the same technique and tracing, through interwoven biographies, the story of America from the early twentieth century to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.